We then spent a little time working on unmatched stances circling to the outside and ended our boxing session with the following combo, lead Mexican uppercut, rear Mexican uppercut finishing with a lead hook to the body.

Our sambo trained was all par terre (ground work) today. Some free rolling and counters to chokes as well and some positional work ending with a step over ankle lock from inside the guard.

I have been taking a martial break since Combat Con, felt real nice to jump back into it. Going to try and get David and Gary ready for Sombo Joe Nationals in August, not sure if we have the time to do it but will be trying.

Just Chris and I today. I was suffering form a case of swimmers ear so I needed to take a bit easier than I liked and I absolutely could not get hit in the ear:)

We started out with some spear today (easy on the ear) reviewing Fiore’s material once again and some other stuff as well.

2 rounds shadow boxing

30 minutes of working on the inside and outside triple from boxing since Greg Hall was kind enough to remind me of this.

We then worked on a kick from Russian Stormfighting…a foutte thrown from the ground. Even though it seems to move pretty slow, it packed a lot of power. We ended the session with a little bit of clinch work and grappling off of the wall.

My wife made me pour apple cider vinegar in my ear after training and believe it or not by morning my ear was almost pain free. Apparently the vinegar kills the bacteria???? Who knew?

On Friday, Gary and i got together for a solid 2 hours of working on sambo and sparring from the Sombo Joe Nationals coming up on the 17th of this month. We worked real heavy on foot sweeps, posts and trips. A good deal of talk and work on game plans and tactics. My daughter Sophia joined us for some beginning sambo as well.

On Sunday Chris, Gary, Jason and I…first hour was Chris and I working mitts and cadence drills along with some energy drills. Not really an eastern martial arts energy drills, more reaction to action type of things.

Gary and Jason showed up for the last hour and we hit the sambo real hard, once again working on trips and plenty of groundwork. Poor Gary got twisted up pretty good but he has made so much progress since he started. it is no walk in the park once you get him on the ground. He is a scrambling machine but he is out weighed by both Chris and I by a good 30-40 lbs. He is going to do great against guys his own size this coming weekend.

Once this weekend is over we wills tart weapon training again as part of our normal routine. Nice to have such a strong focus now and then but I miss doing some things as a result.

Broke out the focus mitts for some work on Russian style fisticuffs. Lead hook followed by a lead back handed blow (backfist or hammer, I prefer hammer) followed by a rear hook. Very fast three punch combo. Nothing new for us but found a nice way to feed it with the mitts so a nice addition. You can see clips of this on our Facebook page:

Our throw for today…the sambo floating throw. A lot like Osoto gari or an outside sweep but a little more aggressive and higher percentage imo but we will see how it works out in the future.

Chris then took us through an armbar set up and a few chokes. I played choke dummy for this portion and to be honest my throat feels pretty wretched today…adams apple is sore and swollen but hey, I knew what I was getting myself into:)

We ended the session with Gary and Chris rolling live.

As usual I wanted to do some weapon work but ran out of time. I need to squeeze some in next week for sure.

Would have considered just skipping today but sweating can be fun and we had to talk about Combat Con and travel plans.

2 rounds shadow boxing

1 round pugilism

1 round savate

1 round kickfighting

2 rounds hand to hand (basically all out combat, we do our best not to break our training partners though but everything goes in this one.)

We were pretty well cooked after the h2h but decided to hit the combat glima some since Matt had a nice takedown on me using the glima single leg during our h2h session. We worked on defending the headhold, then going right from defense into the head hold and headhold takedown, both forward and back. We ended out combat glima or lausa tauk with a three fall bout.

We ended the session with some sambo, working on gaining a leg lock from the back in standing position.

defend the shoot with a sprawl and underhooks, run through into a neck crank. Reverse headlock take down from combat glima. We then worked this same take down with a jacket to add to our sambo game as well. We also went over a leg lever throw from glima.

We ended the session with the navaja, first a quick review of basics then work on the flourish, Sevillian star and defending against thrusts by using hand, blade and evasion techniques. Some work on navaja vs stick as well.

Good rough session…the boxing and savate at least were pretty rough. The rest was mostly technique oriented work but we are well past that point when it comes to beating on each other. Not that we don’t still work technique but more often than not we have been putting what we know to good violent use.

Making some good progress with our Spanish knife play. Lot’s of room for personal expression here IMO. We are all looking a bit different on our way to becoming navajeros.

Chris, Matt and I today…For once, I was completely healthy and had to adjust the session to everyone else’s injuries. Normally it is the other way around but I am not complaining.

2 rounds shadow boxing

2 rounds elbows on the pads followed by some work on elbow combinations mostly using Dempsey for power generation.

Somehow all these elbows lead us to sambo triangle point theory. We went over the basic concept then worked through some variations from the clinch letting things grow from the idea rather than a strict set of techniques. Still working from the clinch we put ourselves against the wall and worked on a few takedowns and reversals from both back to the wall and reversed.

We ended the session with a good long look at some Russian police baton: